Trapped Read Online Free Page A

gray coveralls. Terry and Bob have their hands shoved deep into their coverall pockets, hanging back a bit from the crowd. Henry, the third man in coveralls, has a long ponytail pulled tight to the back of his head.
    Phil, in khakis and a polo, sweeps his hand around the three men in coveralls and the other guy in khakis. “We all work for a plumbing business, Pete’s Plumbing. We were driving to a job a little further west when the cave-in happened.”
    I stare at the five of them, pulling my eyes away only when the Governor starts speaking again. “Now, we have survived a terrible ordeal,” he says, nodding along with others in the circle. “Although the next few days may be difficult, we will get through them. For now, I think, we should all try to rest through the night. It shouldn’t be long until we’re discovered by search teams, but in the mean time, we’ll maintain order here.”
    He straightens his suit jacket and turns to walk back to his car, Bernard following closely behind him. The rest of the group quickly disperses – Simon Tara trudges off, mumbling under his breath, and the Rodriguez’s follow his path to their van. My mom immediately starts whispering with Mrs. Amelia Potts, while Hannah Avery listens closely to every word of their fear. Kevin and Jason turn and walk back to their car, deciding to try to roll it away from where it crashed into Hannah’s to give them a little space. Chris, after one last secret smile, goes back to the wreck of his car – the small corner of the tunnel he’ll have to call home for the time being. And the five workmen all start a hand-on-shoulder kind of talking, laughing as they load into the tall cargo space in the back of the plumbing truck.
    And I...I can’t move, frozen as my mind spins around a single image.
    I saw those three men in gray coveralls on the side of the road before the cave-in. We passed them well before the plumbing truck had been there. The three men were bent down on the sidewalk, safely on the other side of the railing, doing something. There’s no way they could have been riding with the other two when the tunnel collapsed.
    My mind struggles against what this image might mean. Why were those three men there, on the side of the tunnel before the cave-in? What could they have been doing? And perhaps most concerning of all... why would they lie ?

Chapter 2 – Speed, Acceleration, and Abrupt Stops
     
    “You can do this, Emily,” I say quietly, scratching out the equation on a salvaged piece of notebook paper. I hadn’t brought much with me for the math competition – my friend Becca’s mom had picked us up just after lunch, and we’d shoved our backpacks in our lockers before racing out of school. Math competitions can last all afternoon if your team keeps advancing, and Becca had regretted not bringing any homework to keep her occupied in between rounds. But I hadn’t minded just sitting there empty-handed. I’d been too anxious for the finals to even contemplate homework.
    Now I’m regretting my lack of resources. “Okay, so if the speed limit of the tunnel is 55 miles per hour...” Focused on keeping my handwriting steady, I carefully draw a short stretch of road on the scrap of paper. I use a small box to represent the plumbing truck’s position near the curve in the tunnel, then think of a simple speed-distance equation to estimate how far away it must be from our small box of a car.
    “Mom was definitely going at least 60, though. So 60 miles per hour, that means 60 miles per 60 minutes, so that’s one mile per minute. After we passed those guys on the side of the road, we switched lanes, probably driving about five or six more seconds before the cave-in. One-tenth of a minute, so one-tenth of a mile...”
    How long is a mile? ‘ 5280 feet’ pops into my head, and I divide it by ten. “528 feet. A good deal less than 200 yards. So about the length of one-and-a-half football fields.” I raise my eyes to look out the